moalawolfgramm

[moalawolfgramm]

Type Specimen Book - Rationale

Making and Media has broadened my understanding around typography and design, helping me to think deeper and more critically when making design choices for this type specimen book. Through making this type specimen I have been able to use the tools and strategies I have been learning in real time.

Pepeha was a big part of this paper which I found surprising but made sense when the assignment was explained. The purpose of Pepeha is to make connections with others and see what similarities you have, so using Pepeha I made connections to the typeface that I have displayed in this type specimen. I chose to find a typeface that I thought connected to the art from Ngatu (tapa) which is a taonga from my Tongan culture. It is the way we share stories and remember moments by hand drawing motifs that represent this on large tapa cloths. I found these motifs and the style of drawing very similar to the and the overall visual look of Copal Std and patterns found in the 'Decorated' style.

One of the big learnings I had was the importance of typographic Hierarchy and the different elements I can use to achieve this successfully. Using things like contrast, spacing, rhythm, drop caps, scaling, captions were ways I could make content easily readable but still interesting enough for the reader to be engaged. Since I chose a poster typeface, I couldn't use that for my body text and captions as I don't think it would have good readability and would not have any interesting hierarchy. I had to choose a secondary font that would pair well with Copal but also a effective typeface for body text. I experimented with a few different typefaces, some serif and some san serif, but finally landed on using American Typewriter as it is very readable being a serif font but still has a similar feel to Copal.

Some challenges that I faced were finding the right typeface that connected to my Pepeha and keeping up with my tumblr blog. I do feel if I had been more active with my blog it would have helped me retain information and also work through my ideas faster. This is something I will definitely be working on for the second half of the semester. Overall, I have enjoyed what I have been learning in Making and Media and look forward to learning more over the next 6 weeks.

[moalawolfgramm]

FINAL TYPE SPECIMEN

I made a few  changes...

In the English version of the Maunga section, instead of having 'Mangere Mountain is my mountain' I changed it to it's actual name which I didn't actually know was 'Te Pane o Mataoho'.

I also, made a better transition between the maori and English section of my awa. Since Manukau was going to be in both 'pages' I used the position and scale keyframes to animate growing and shrinking into it's new position staggered letter by letter. I thought it needed something to make it a bit more interesting and I think that was a successful addition.

Overall, I'm super happy with how my final kinetic animation came out and I'm surprised that I actually stuck with my original idea. Even though it didn't really pan from each section like I originally thought it would, I liked how the concept was still there but I was able to use previous knowledge I have of after effects  to create more interesting transitions and animations between the sections.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 13 - PEPEHA & Credits

I left a strip down the middle of the main image to put in the title of my animation, 'Pepeha'. I decided to use the Decorated style of Copal as I have that same word in my type specimen book in that style font so wanted to do the same in my animation.

I used a staggered fade in using the opacity keyframes  to bring it into the image as I feel that is a smooth way to reveal the final title and finish the final frame. I then went with a simple fade out lowering the opacity of the final image to go into my credits. I didn't have to credit anyone as I made all the resources myself so just had the requirements that I read in the Week 11 Powerpoint.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 13 - Final Frame

As mentioned in my previous post, I wanted the last frame to be all the sections showing as Tapa Cloth/Ngatu. Of course I made the final put together image in illustrator 😅 then added it into after effects. I ended up making it the background for the final section where it said 'I am Tongan' so that I could zoom out from there to show the whole tapa. I experimented with different ways to zoom out. At first I just used the scale and position key frames to animate this. It looked a bit too plain just going straight from corner to zoomed out. 

I then tried out doing the animation in 2 movements, so I moved the scale keyframes down in the timeline to activate after the position keyframes. This was more interesting but still thought it could use something a bit more.

I ended up using the rotation keyframes and adding motion blur to give it a really interesting spiral effect. I thought this was the best transition into the final image and decided to go with that one for the final transition.

[moalawolfgramm]

FINAL FRAME 2

[moalawolfgramm]

FINAL FRAME 1

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 12 - final Section... 

In the final frame I am planning to have all the sections showing which will be the tapa/ngatu as a whole. Since I've done the middle section red, I thought it would look best to do the final section the same colour as the first so it looks symmetrical as Ngatu usually does. 

For this last section I wanted to introduce the text in a different way again. I made the pattern with the text in Illustrator like my other sections. When animating it in after effects I wanted to do more of a zoom and pan effect. I used the scale and position keyframes to animate it zooming in and out from word to word for 'No Tonga Ahau'.

I thought this was effective as it really emphasised the words as it being the last statement of my pepeha. Especially when going from 'Tonga' to 'Ahau', while it panned I intentionally zoomed out and back in emphasising on the last word instead of just panning to it. 

I then animated it into the English version of the phrase with the Island Tongatapu being the image. Really happy with how this section turned out too.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 12 - 'Awa' Section 

To make my animation more interesting I thought I'd try rearange the colours so it wasn't just the same background colour all the time. I decided for the Awa section to try out having the background colour as red, the pattern black and text white for it too stand out the most.

I didn't want to add the text with the same rolling animation as in the 'Maunga' section so I thought I could add the pattern in a new way then just use masks to show the text through the pattern, almost like opening the tiles. Really happy with how this came out. I transitioned to the English version in the same way as in the Maunga section and animated it pretty much the same too.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 11 - First Section Done!

I have decided to add another 'page' to each section. It will be the English translation of my pepeha. To go with this I thought it would be good to have a visual that represents each thing. So for example I'll have an image of Mangere mountain and it saying "Mangere mountain is my mountain" on that page.

I made what I wanted the final frame to look like in illustrator first then brought all the elements into after effects to animate it all together. I used mostly the position keyframes to animate the elements in and out. I think it's very successful having just the background pattern first then bringing the text and mountain image in separately to create some interesting movement. 

It would have been too wordy to have the whole sentence 'Mangere mountain is my mountain' all together so I decided to add the text in sections. I had to be mindful of the viewer when thinking about timing making sure there is enough time to read the text before  bringing in the next set of words.

I'm really happy with how this first section came out and now that I have one section done, I believe it will help me with the next two sections as I kind of have a template to go off.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 11 - Using compositions to keep timeline organised

As David mentioned in class, it's important to keep your timeline organised by grouping layers into new compositions. I had to do this especially with the rolling animation for the 'Maunga' section of my animation. As each letter had to be a separate layer and there were 2 masks per layer too I had to make each word it's own subfolder then also make the whole phrase it's own composition too. I found it was a lot easier to just make my layers then use the 'Pre-Compose feature to put them into their compositions.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 11 - Missed Class - Animation progress

Unfortunately I could not make it to class this week but I still continued to work on my animation. 

Progress I have made: 

I decided I wanted to actually have the letters be animated into the pattern. I thought I could use the idea I hade with the tiles changing but instead of all the tiles changing, having only the tiles where text was going to replace the patterned tiles change. 

I found this tutorial on YouTube that I thought would look quite good with the text being animated in. I followed this tutorial and the end result turned out way better than I expected. I staggered the entrance of the tiles from top to bottom and then staggered the ending for each letter to land in it's final position. This made it a lot more interesting instead of them all starting and finishing at the same time.

I also decided to change the colour of the text so that the text could stand out more. So it could be similar with my type specimen book I used the same red and this was really effective to make my text stand out!

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 10 - Kinetic Type Animation Progress

Reflecting on what I have made so far I think that it was a lot of work just to wrap my head around the masking and doing every individual tile so I might go back to my original idea with moving from different sections of my pepeha. This way it will actually feel like it's all one piece of ngatu instead of just changing tiles.

I started by making each section in illustrator then exporting them through asset export then bringing them into After Effects and using the position keyframes to move between each one. To make the movement between them look a bit more natural, I put 'Easy ease' on the keyframes and adjusted this using the graph editor so I could adjust how each one would move. This made it the movements a  lot more interesting.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 10 - Timelapse in After Effects

This week we had the other David come and take our class as Ezra and David were away. We were shown how to import images to create a time lapse. This was super easy to learn and might be useful for another project. I don't think I will have enough time to produce a time lapse for this project but am glad I know how to do this if I need it for another project.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 9 - Kinetic Type Progress

So I started out making some pattern designs in Illustrator and Ezra taught me how to use Asset Export to export each of the pattern squares I made. I then brought them into After effects and used masks on each square for a smooth way to change into another pattern square. I thought it would look good with the changes happening randomly so set the keyframes for the masks to change at different times.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 8 - Research

I went to Behance to find inspiration for my animation. Since I am thinking of using a grid structure I found this animation quite interesting... I am thinking that instead of having the whole sections shift off screen to a new section of my pepeha, I could make each tile animate into the next section. These are ways I can make each tile animate to the next section.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 8 - After Effects Testing

In class I was mucking around a bit with a piece of text from my Pepeha. I'm not sure if I will use this in my animation or not but I like the way the words link into each other using letters that are in the same word.

[moalawolfgramm]

WEEK 8 - After Effects Introduction

This week we we learned about frame rate and what different frame rates looked like in a Spiderman animation. For my animation I think I will stick with the usual 24 frames as that looks more natural to the eye.

We also were introduced to After Effects today by David. I have used after effects before so that helped a lot. Since I know the basics of After effects, I think I will use it to create my animation instead of a stop motion or hand drawn animation as I have not done either of those before...